Imagine if Joe Biden threatened attacking Greenland and then in front of a world audience confused Greenland and Iceland. Mental competence questions would rage.

Mafia goon: Nice house you got here...it'd be a shame if something happened to it Media outlets: Mafia goon rules out use of force. Expresses regret at the mere thought of it

"The moral of the fable about the goose that laid the golden egg is straightforward, but it never really worked for me as a story. Like, come on: Nobody’s that stupid. Well, *almost* nobody, I guess." Today's Morning Shots from @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social and @eggerdc.bsky.social:

Very good piece about what Europe can and should do about Trump's Greenland threats by @himself.bsky.social. But will they? Or will national divisions, denial, and risk aversion get in the way? Essentially, Europe could use more Tom Schelling Thought. Gift link, for anyone without a subscription:

The Times interviews and quotes the university president, who says things like the old New College “was ‘a little Club Med' for people who were all ideologically the same." He is only identified as a former state education commissioner. This leaves out a lot. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nyt-re...

But how could SCOTUS logically grandfather it? If the Constitution doesn’t grant birthright citizenship today then it didn’t in the past either. It would be pure legislating from the bench

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o... This will make me massively unpopular here, but it makes total sense that automated cars are safer than human drivers and we should welcome them.

If Carl von Clausewitz were to advise Secretary Rubio on peace in Ukraine, he might say something like this: lnk.thebulwark.com/4pzTkrK

“Don’t send me the best pasta in the world, anything but that!” 🇮🇹“Worse! I’ll send it too you cheaper than you can possibly make it” 🇺🇸”I am undone!”

Something Dems (especially natsecs types) need to get through their thick skulls is the only way we might come back from this internationally is if the accountability for it is swift, broad, and punishing Politicals, career type, in or out of govt c. 2029, no matter the rank, they all need to fry

DST is why most Americans wake by alarm in darkness. Permanent Standard Time would let us sleep longer and awaken naturally to sunlight, for health!

Given the Trumpist assault on the patriotism of all who plan to attend No Kings rallies, I urge every Democratic elected official to attend one. They shouldn’t speak—if there are speakers, better to br less partisan civic leaders and citizens—but they should stand in solidarity with the rest of us.

if there are risks inherent in protesting and resistance, the best thing we can do is face them head-on, together

as a freedom of speech enjoyer im simply not worried about the opsec stuff, i haven't made any threats or anything. disapproving of dear leader isn't a crime and if they make it one i refuse to give it the legitimacy of hiding

Posting a criticism of Charlie Kirk - much less noting something outrageous he himself said - is not “celebrating” his murder. Nor is it condoning his murder. It is simply saying that his political career and legacy are not something to be celebrated. And that is not the same thing at all.

Please don't forget, and don't let anyone else forget, they did this openly.

The fact that Matthew Dowd lost his job for pointing out Charlie Kirk’s hate speech, while Brian Kilmeade openly suggests we should euthanize the homeless and there is zero outrage, shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.

wrote on charlie kirk for the newsletter this weekend

there's a weird feedback loop where the media's reaction to kirk's death pushes you to speak more ill of the dead than you otherwise would because it's the only reasonable response to the simpering praise they're heaping on him

Now that Kirk's killer seems to be caught, maybe the news could spare a moment's attention for the right wing, from the commentariat up to the GOP and president, whose immediate reaction was not mourning, but to seize the opportunity to try to incite violence against groups they hate

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

and while i am on the subject, i don’t need to make big, plaintive bleats about how political violence isn’t the answer because i don’t call for political violence and i don’t support people who do. know who did? charlie kirk.

Do we have to pretend that he didn't believe these things? I don't think he should have been killed; I think the killer should be brought to justice. But transforming him into someone who believed things other than what he said, so we can correctly perform the political moment, is lying.

The last 100 years of US politics

Seriously, of the three huge spending problem areas, healthcare and education are massively influenced by Baumol's Cost Disease, but housing isn't - we could just turn on that industrial wealth machine and build to abundance.

Just to level set on this: What they have experienced are some of the worst things that a government could possibly do to people. There is absolutely nothing that happened here that should have happened. The people responsible for this should have it follow them the rest of their lives.

People will deadass be like “the information environment is bad for democrats” and “republicans stay relentlessly on message” and then also be like “there is no point in saying republicans are bad lol”

This Supreme Court would absolutely find some fig leaf of a legal reason to legalize full concentration camps in the US.

Every political simpleton who thought gunning down a greedheaded health industry CEO was righteous and badass can now reflect today on the horror in Minnesota and know this fresh American hell will not be compartmentalized. They can. But they won't. That's what raw ideology does to human beings.

ARE YOU WIDE AWAKE?! Good God imagine if we could get this happening again.

god jake tapper is a piece of shit

If the president gives unlawful orders, it’s the responsibility of military officers to refuse those orders. It’s imperative the movement maintains non-violent discipline so the military will side with the constitution and the people. We can win if we stand together.

I agree with all of this, and it's why debating "Zionism" and "anti-Zionism," after 1948, is almost always a mistake. Just talk about your vision for what a just future should look like for everyone living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. forward.com/forward-news...

Tell me: if these dudes show up with guns in an unmarked van to grab someone, why don’t the Second Amendment fans think they should be shot?

I've been saying it for years: the average "suburban liberal wine mom" with a trans kid has INFINITELY more skin in this game than the average hammer-and-sickle-emoji-in-bio insufferable keyboard warrior.

Yeah it's an incredibly provincial attitude from Americans. In the global context, the swings against the incumbent party in the US were trivially small compared to the punishment voters offered almost every other incumbent party regardless of ideology. Tweaking policy or message was just not enough

Anyway, I agree with George Packer, so here's a gifted copy of his article. The rest of you should stop thinking you're the White Rose. /3x www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

It’s considered “edgy” in progressive circles to say America has always been this way, and we’re now just seeing it more clearly. I think this kind of cynicism just lets Trump off the hook, and sells America and its history incredibly short.

I didn’t even have to scroll after opening the linked article to see that this tweet was false. bsky.app/profile/lexi...

As if Chang Chang wasn't good enough already.

"It was worth <actual tangible material costs to X> because we got to continue centering X" is truly just fascinating as a statement of your own priorities; it feels more like a parody

"many of the president's actions are legal"

One thing I wonder: with Trump's popularity quickly collapsing, do the institutions caving to him ever stop and consider what it's going to look like if he becomes widely hated, and they're the college/law firm/company that buckled while a bunch of their competitors did not?

stupidest thing about Scott Alexander going "huh, we just wanted to talk about 'biological realism', but now there are nazis everywhere?!" is that are from a rationalist perspective *extremely* clear & compelling reasons for having discursive norms against "are these people subhuman? let's discuss."